


we are not shining stars

by barnes (sceaps)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A lot - Freeform, Avengers have feelings too, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Lots of Crying, M/M, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Not A Fix-It, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter misses Tony, Post-Endgame, Tony Stark Dies, tony stark's funeral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 02:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20368984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sceaps/pseuds/barnes
Summary: "You can rest now,” Pepper says in a broken whisper, cradling Tony’s face in her hands, and Peterbreaks.





	we are not shining stars

Peter’s only narrowly just dived in front of another _ Lord Of the Rings- _ type alien to save Mantis when there’s a blinding flash of light and everything goes white around him. He blinks, disoriented — there had probably been a plan as to how to win this fight, but he’s barely been back half an hour and there was no time for discussion. He makes his way towards the source as fast as he can, and when he sees someone slumped against a rock face, blood dripping down cold stone, there’s a coiling feeling in his gut that makes him think _ this is different, this is not okay. _

And then he sees Tony. 

He looks...ragged. Charred. Falling apart at the seams in the most literal sense. His eyes are wide and unseeing, and Peter feels his blood run cold. _ Shit. _This is not good. This is very not good.

“Mr. Stark?” He asks, and it comes out as little more than a whisper. He watches as, with a seemingly great amount of effort, Tony’s eyes find his. 

“We won, Mr. Stark,” Peter chokes out, and his throat tightens. He feels his eyes burn. “We won.”

Tony just _ stares, _and Peter can’t tell if he can even understand him. 

“Tony,” he breathes.

And then Pepper’s there, and she pushes Peter aside to get to him. He doesn’t object, his eyes still fixated on Tony. The suit is cracked to the core in a way that nanobots will never be able to weave back together. Tony’s hair is matted with blood and dust, and he smells like smoke.

“It’s okay,” Pepper says softly. Tony reaches up to clutch at her arm, and Peter bites back a sob as he watches Pepper’s hands catch his wrist and hold tight. He scrubs gamely at his eyes, but he’s tearing up too fast. He feels another _ “Tony” _bubble up in his throat, but it’s lost in the tightness of his larynx.

And then — he’s not sure when the shift happens — Tony’s eyes go from glassy to unseeing, and his arm goes limp in Pepper’s.

“You can rest now,” Pepper says in a broken whisper, cradling Tony’s face in her hands, and Peter _ breaks. _

  1. Denial

“He can’t be,” Peter whispers, staring at Tony’s limp body, watching still-warm blood drip down his temples. He can barely see the body through his tears. “He can’t be…” He turns toward Strange. “Fix him,” he says determinedly. “You can fix him, can’t you? Bring him back. Use your magic thing.”

“I’m sorry, Peter,” Strange says. There’s a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “This...This was the only way.”

“He can’t just _ die!” _Peter shouts, his voice breaking halfway. “He isn’t — he can’t —“

“I’m sorry,” Strange whispers again, and Peter can see that he means it. 

“He isn’t dead,” Peter says firmly, though his voice shakes. “He-he can’t be.” He glances at the body, and his stomach flips as he watches Pepper’s slim fingers gently close his eyes. “Mr. Stark?” 

“He’s gone, Peter.”

  1. Anger

The first thing Peter does after the dust has settled is call May. 

She picks up on the third ring and she’s mad, sure — who wouldn’t be mad if their nephew was battling dangerous villains at barely sixteen? Peter expects more yelling, and Steve Rogers glances at him across the room. He’s seated on that one garish couch everyone keeps trying to throw out. _ Tony’s couch, _his mind supplies, and he has to turn away. 

“Everything alright, Peter?” May asks gently. Peter tries to respond, but his throat is closing up and all he can do is nod. He hopes he gets the point across over the phone. 

“I...I heard the news,” she says. There’s a shifting sound through the phone; Peter can imagine her now, seated on her starched sheets with the phone close to her ear. His stomach twists painfully.

“What news?” He whispers. 

“About Tony Stark.” She pauses. “I’m sorry, honey.” 

Peter’s blood runs cold. 

“What do you mean, you’re sorry?” He snarls, suddenly vicious. He grips his phone tighter. “You weren’t there for any of it. You didn’t even _ know _him. You can’t just be sorry; it’s not that easy.” 

“I didn’t mean—“ May starts, but Peter cuts her off. 

“You weren’t there and you don’t _ understand! _You don’t get what it’s like to — to —“

_ To lose both parents and finally feel like you have one again. To know someone who saw a glimmer of potential in you. _

_ To feel like I had a dad again. _

“That’s _ enough, _Peter,” Steve says — when did he get over here? Peter could swear he’d been perched on Tony’s couch a second ago — and grabs the phone out of Peter’s hands. 

“Sorry about that, Ms. Parker,” he says, putting the phone to his ear. “He’s just…” He exhales, looking down at Peter. “He’s unsettled, and it’ll take a while to heal from this. It’ll take _ all _of us a while to heal from this.” 

There are a couple _ yes ma’am _ ’s and _ I will _’s on Steve’s end of the phone. Peter swallows back his tears and clenches his fists, hard. His knuckles are white by the time Steve hangs up, and when his hands unfold to accept his phone back, there are crescents deep into his palms. 

“Peter,” Steve says sternly, “that was no way to talk to a guardian.” 

Peter goes to spit out a _ how would you know _, but Steve gets down to his knees in front of him and the words die in his throat. They’re about eye level now, Steve on the floor and Peter curled up in his chair. Peter expects to get an earful from Steve, but what happens next couldn’t be more different. 

“It’s okay not to be okay,” Steve says gently, placing a hand on Peter’s knee. He takes one of Peter’s hands in his own, tugging gently until he releases the tight fist he’s formed. “I know how you feel. I’ve been there. But I need you to trust me when I say that everything will be okay in the end.”

Peter can’t even look at Steve head-on. Steve reaches for his other hand, and Peter gives in. 

“Mr. Barnes came back,” he says shakily. “You haven’t — you haven’t lost like —“

“My mother was a nurse. Caught TB from her ward and passed not long after,” Steve says quietly. “Dad died in the war — mustard gas. I—“ his voice trembles. “I lost Peggy a couple years ago, but the whole time I was there with her, since I came back, everything was so _different. _I felt like I’d already lost her.” He looks up, and his eyes are a world of pain. “Before everything happened, I...I wanted to _marry _her, Peter.” 

Somewhere, deep down, Peter feels his heart break for this man. He’s been through too much, seen too much hardship and had too little time for himself. He can see himself reflected in Steve’s shining eyes and thinks that the pair of them might not be so different after all. 

“Dum Dum, Dernier, Morita, Jomes — I lost all of them,” Steve says in barely a whisper. “Everyone I’ve ever cared about. They’re all gone now.”

“You still have Mr. Barnes,” Peter says quickly, because he can’t stand that broken look in Steve’s eyes. 

“That’s true,” Steve says, and he’s looking at Peter but his eyes are somewhere else. “I still have Bucky.”

Peter purses his lips.

“I know it feels like the world is ending,” Steve says, “but I promise you, Peter, it’s going to be okay. _ You’re _going to be okay.”

Peter’s been doing a good job of holding back his tears, but when Steve reaches for him, he gives in. Steve pulls him to his chest, and it’s nothing like how Tony hugs and at the same time, exactly like him. His hands fist in Steve’s starched button-down and he cries like a _ child, _cries all the tears he’s been holding in and more, cries like he’ll never let Steve go. For the smallest of seconds, he allows himself to indulge his fantasy of his dad pulling him close — pretends that Steve’s arms, stronger than his father’s ever were, are his family. He feels Steve shaking and thinks he might let go, but he holds Peter even tighter. 

“You’re gonna be okay, kid,” Steve whispers into his hair. Peter muffles a sob in the collar of Steve’s shirt. 

  1. Bargaining

“Mr. Strange,” Peter says once the meeting has ended. He and the magician are the only two left in the glass-paneled conference room, and Strange has been looking at him the whole meeting like he knew what Peter was going to ask him afterward. 

“Mr. Strange,” Peter says again, slightly desperately. Once Stephen might’ve corrected him with a firm _ Doctor, _but he hasn’t officially been one in years, though his title still technically remains. 

“It can’t be done,” Strange tells him, his lips pursing in a tight line. “Save yourself the trouble of asking.” He acts like telling Peter so causes him real pain. And maybe it does; Peter had known he and Tony were close before. 

_ Before. _

“But — it has to,” Peter says wildly. “You’re an actual magician! If anyone can bring him back, it’s you! There has to be a way.”

“There isn’t,” Strange says simply. “I’m very sorry, but it just isn’t possible. The normal laws of magic don’t apply to…” He waves a hand aimlessly as if to illustrate a point. “Resurrection. Necromancy. It’s extraordinarily dangerous to even try.”

“Have you?”

Strange sighs. “Yes and no. When examining this timeline, I saw...flashes. I’ll take all the preventative measures I can to make sure nobody else dies, but...Tony’s gone, Peter. I can’t fix that.”

Peter’s hands ball into fists and he bites his lip, wanting to yell but thinking better of it. 

“If there was any way I could bring him back safely, have no doubt that it would be the first thing I would do,” Strange says. He’s composed as per usual, dressed in that blue tunic and creepy, probably-sentient cloak, but his lip quivers slightly. His right hand comes up to pull at his ring finger. 

Suddenly everything is falling into place. 

“You loved him,” Peter whispers. 

Strange stiffens, but after a moment he bows his head. 

“How long?” He asks because he’s criminally curious, but just as much because he had loved Tony too. Maybe not in the same way that Strange had, but he’d loved him all the same. 

“It isn’t that simple,” Strange says. “Forever, and barely at all. Shit hit the fan after the snap.”

“But you loved him.”

“How could I not?” Strange says, voice barely audible. “He was...he was _ brilliant, _ in every sense of the word. He kept me _ right _.”

“I loved him too,” Peter says. “He kinda reminded me of my dad, but, y’know.”

He doesn’t know where this sudden bout of honesty is coming from, but he finds he doesn’t mind sharing it with Strange. 

“If I could’ve brought him back, it would’ve been the first thing I’d have done,” Strange repeats, and this time, Peter believes him.

  1. Depression

“Peter? Ned’s here.” 

Peter lifts his head off of his pillow. “Let him in.” 

There’s the sound of footsteps and hushed chatter, and then his door creaks open. 

“Dude, you look awful.”

Peter hasn’t looked in the mirror in days, but he doesn’t disagree, even out of principle. He must look a mess — his eyes feel bruised and puffy, and he hasn’t washed his hair in days. He feels disgusting.

“Thanks, man. Really appreciate it.”

Ned forces him to roll over and sits down on the bed next to him. “Everything okay?”

Peter laughs humorlessly.

“Not like okay-okay,” Ned says quickly, shaking his head. “I know you aren’t there yet. But, like, on a scale from negative one to negative ten, where are you right now?”

“Negative twelve,” Peter mumbles into his pillow.

“What?” 

He lifts his face up. “Negative twelve.”

Ned frowns.

— 

“I got a new Lego set,” Ned says. He’s hanging off of the bed, legs cemented against the headboard as if that’ll keep him from falling on his head. “AT-AT walker. Eleven hundred and thirty-seven pieces.”

“Nice.”

Ned nods decisively. “I’m, like, ninety percent sure it’s been discontinued. I got a new set real cheap off of eBay, though.”

“Neat,” Peter says, picking at his cuticles.

“I know, ri—” Ned begins, then stops. “Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”

“What?”

“The old Peter would never say “neat” in response to an ultra-rare Lego Star Wars set! What kind of fuckery is this? “Neat”? Even my _ grandma _doesn’t say neat!”

Peter groans, rolling over and clutching his pillow to his chest. “I just miss him, okay?”

Ned’s face falls, but within a moment, his hands are around Peter’s shoulders and he’s pulling him into his chest. 

“He gave me everything,” Peter whispers brokenly. He’s too exhausted to cry. He can barely eat and sleep; anything more rigorous takes too much effort. “He gave me everything, gave me opportunity after opportunity, and I threw it all down the fucking drain because I was so obsessed with staying a _ friendly neighboorhood Spiderman.” _ He knocks his head against Ned’s chest. “I threw it all away and now he’s dead and it’s all my fault; if I’d just swallowed my stupid pride and taken the suit, maybe I’d have figured out how to use it and I could’ve helped so much during the battle. I could’ve been _ fighting _instead of sitting on the sidelines, yanking people out every few minutes.”

Ned’s arms are warm. He’s always warm, much warmer than Peter anyway. Peter feels a tear trickle down his cheek and thinks that he might just fall asleep here in his best friend’s arms, and maybe when he wakes up, everything will be back to normal. 

“Mr. Stark was truly a G,” Ned says solemnly, arms still tight around Peter. “He will always be remembered fondly through the eyes of his friends and cringy high school video announcements.”

Peter giggles despite himself.

  1. Acceptance

The funeral is limited to close family and friends. Peter stands behind Steve and watches people, mostly the Avengers, talk about how much Tony meant to them. Strange gets up and talks quietly and briefly, and Peter watches Steve’s shoulders shake with suppressed emotion. 

He’s not sure how, but he ends up speaking. There’s a hand on his back and someone guides him toward the podium. He bites his lip, facing everyone he’s come to know and love in the past few years. 

“I loved him,” Peter says simply, “and I miss him. He meant the world to me, and it really sucks that I never got to tell him. And I wish so, so much that he’d come back, but —” his lip wobbles, and he catches Strange’s tear-filled eyes from across the lawn — “it’s not possible. I hope he’s doing okay for himself. Wherever he is. If there’s an afterlife, I hope he can grab a cheeseburger or something.”

Nobody claps. Nobody’s clapped for the last hour or so. Peter steps away from the microphone and makes his way back to his spot, nodding back at people in dark suits and darker ties. 

When the next person (Colonel Rhodes) is speaking, May puts her hand on the small of his back. “I love you, hon,” she says, and Peter blinks away tears. 

Strange is by his side now; mere feet away (when did he get so close?) and Steve’s broad shoulders span in front of him. Peter wipes his cheeks with his shirtsleeves and straightens, blinking determinedly. 

“It’s okay,” Rhodey says from up at the podium. “I’ve found myself struggling to go back to work without him there — there’s nothing to look forward to, and fuck if I didn’t wish he’d call me at three in the morning with another one of his stupid dad jokes. But I think...I think he’d want us all to carry on. With or without him, he always knew that the world would keep spinning, and he’s done his absolute best to help that world. More than enough. So I’m going to keep doing what I do best, and I can only hope that I’ll be able to honor his memory by doing so.”

He meets Peter’s eyes.

“And I’ll always know who his favorite was,” he says. A small ripple of laughter echoes through the crowd — they’ve all assumed Rhodey is talking about himself — but his eyes are fixed on Peter’s, and he feels his own mouth break into a shadowy echo of a smile. He knows in that moment, without a doubt, that Rhodey was talking about him.

**Author's Note:**

> i know this is shitty but don't @ me i wanted to get this out of my system


End file.
